Featured | Persimon Dreams

Nini’s Granny Square Quilt

Posted by PersimonDreams on May 20, 2013 in Featured, quilt, quilt gallery | 2 comments

I started this quilt in 2012. The amazing woman who watches my children is also a HUGE supporter of my work! I love bringing my ‘projects’ over and hearing what she thinks of them. Last year I snagged some charm squares from her and started to make a granny square quilt out of them for her. Originally it was just going to be a little table topper BUT then it looked so cool I decided to go bigger.

This is not a typical quilt for me. The fact that I used this much white is just amazing. I think the white looks fabulous BUT it scares the crap out of me! I’m not good at ‘taking care’ of things so the entire time it was in my house I was super afraid I, one of my children, or my husband would spill something on it or do something to it. I even had to borrow a special ‘white fabric’ iron from Diane so I wouldn’t accidently stain it with my old school super heavy iron. The four blocks in the upper right corner were what started it all. I’m really happy with this quilt and know that Nini loves it. Each square in the granny square is just 2.5” before being sewn together and there was no ‘short cut’ to make this one. It was tedious but the end result is fabulous!

This quilt looked great before I sent it to Barb Raisbeck of Quilts by Barb for quilting but when it came back from Barb it was absolutely stunning! She did this amazing modern linear wavy quilting all over the piece that just makes it look like it’s moving. I was so thrilled with it I had to call her immediately to thank her for the incredible job she did!

Seriously!? Isn’t the quilting on this absolutely incredible!?

I’ll admit though – I got that binding on, snapped these photo’s and immediately gave the quilt to Nini so I wouldn’t worry anymore about doing something to all that white!

Pop Up Outdoor Quilt Show Haiku

Posted by PersimonDreams on May 19, 2013 in Featured, Haiku | 0 comments

Quilts all in a row

hanging amongst the blossoms

my two worlds combine

Soccer Saturday

Posted by PersimonDreams on May 18, 2013 in Capri, family, Featured, Kids, Mercedi | 2 comments

Cedi and Capri were on their first Soccer ‘Teams’ this year. I have to say I really enjoyed watching them play.

Capri played on the 4K soccer team.With 41 other 5 year olds. It was a bit chaotic but I have to admit I was very impressed at how well they waited in line for their turn and listed to their coaches.Capri’s team mainly did drills. Capri LOVED soccer.Cedi was on the Kindergarten Team. It was really nice because the two teams practiced next to each other at the same day and time of the week. I really thought Cedi did good at the drills. She liked to run and actually had pretty decent ball control. I’m really happy with her coach. He did a great job with the kids. I just found out yesterday he’ll move up with the kids as they progress since his nephew is on the team. Yeah!For their first ‘scrimmage’ Cedi had to wear a Pinny. She was not happy about this.I love how when the scrimmage first started all the kids just stayed in a knot

But by the end of the ‘game’ you could see that they were figuring out that if they spread out things went a bit better.

I have to admit – Cedi was really good at the drills. She is not so good in the scrimmages…but we’ll see if she figures that out as she gets older.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival–Spring 2013–Entry 2

Posted by PersimonDreams on May 17, 2013 in art quilt, Featured, Project QUILTING, quilt gallery | 7 comments

Happy May 17th everyone again! Today is the start of one of my favorite two times of the year – the Spring Edition of the Blogger’s Quilt Festival over at AmysCreativeSide!

If you’ve never been at my blog before – Welcome! and for those who have – Welcome Back!

I had a hard time deciding which ‘second’ quilt I wanted to enter into the Blogger’s Quilt Festival I asked for help – and it seems like most love them all equally…so I’m going with my gut keeping in mind that there will be another Blogger’s Quilt Festival this fall!

I have decided to enter my quilt

“Local Foods Grow Local Communities’ into the art quilt category.

I created this piece based on the Project QUILTING Challenge ‘Print Publications’

Basically – we were challenge to grab a print publication, turn to page 28 and be inspired by what we saw. I choose a publication called ‘Grow’ and when turned to page 28 it happened to be the reason I had that publication in my possession. A friend had brought it by because my family’s apple orchard was mentioned in an article. When I turned to page 28…it was the first page of the article we were featured in. It was destiny…time to be inspired!

When I looked at my page 28 I knew I had an easy page for inspiration. BUT the challenge I made for myself was that I wanted to be ‘inspired’ by the page and not just replicate the page.

The Locavore School is about bringing local foods into the school lunches. My orchard has been providing apples to multiple school districts in the area for many years. I finally knew what I wanted to do!

Upper left: First – I needed a background. Nothing in my stash was what I was looking for so I decided to paint my own. I used a neutral piece of Tula Pink’s ‘Prince Charming’ print and I did a watered down acrylic painting on it. It’s watered down enough so you can still see the images of the original print if you look closely.

Upper Middle: I needed to draw a tree…that was my plan – I wanted to show a tree in it’s entirety – including the roots. So I sketched it out and then traced the sections onto some iron on fusible.

Upper Right: I chose to do the roots mostly with an apple printed fabric. I did mix in other foods such as eggs, peas, corn, and carrots into the roots as well but since we’re an apple orchard I figured that would be a good focus.

Lower Left: I knew I wanted my ‘tree’ to be made of kids. Here I need to let you know that we only have one week to complete a Project QUILTING Challenge. If you nee a certain fabric you need to buy it right away in the week. It took me a few days to come up with my concept and my time was running low. I searched my stash for all the ‘people’ prints I could find, Diane pulled al the ‘people’ from her stash too. It wasn’t what I was envisioning. At this point it was Wednesday and on Wednesday my baby Pip goes to a sitter who also happens to sew. I was explaining my concept to her and asked her if she happened to have any ‘kid’ prints. And what you see in the trees is what she had! She was kind enough to donate a fat quarter of it to my project and it was seriously the PERFECT PIECE! I used kid print for the tree top and then I did a scrappy collection of different prints for the trunk so you can still distinguish between the two.

Lower Middle: I free motion quilted along the roots and around the tree. With the painted fabric it created sort of a ‘puffy’ effect.

Lower RIght: To finish it off I embellished with some Angellina fibers in the roots and the sky. I added a ‘lip’ of pink strawberry printed fabric on the edge and with the binding. I made it too big…so I tacked it back in a few different places around the corner. It’s hard to see in the picture but it created this really awesome wavy effect to the border of the quilt. I will definitely be using this technique again!

Here’s the finished quilt with the inspiration page next to it! I hope you enjoyed reading about my process and inspiration for my piece ‘Local Foods Grow Strong Communities.’

‘The festival starts today, and runs through May 31st. It’s open to anyone who wants to enter, and there will be lots of great prizes. Be sure to check it out NOW! Get your post written and show off your quilt or quilts! You can enter two this year!

Once you’ve had a chance to visit as many of the quilts, as possible you may nominate your very favorite, for a Viewer’s Choice Award! To nominate complete the form at the bottom of the THIS POST with the link to the post and your email address. Nominations without a valid email will be eliminated, and multiple nominations with the same email will be eliminated. One entry per email address please.

If ‘Local Foods Grow Strong Communities’ is your favorite quilt head over to THIS POST and copy the text below:

Blogger’s Quilt Festival–Spring 2013

Posted by PersimonDreams on May 17, 2013 in Featured, home sweet home, quilt, quilt gallery | 10 comments

Happy May 17th everyone! Today is the start of one of my favorite two times of the year – the Spring Edition of the Blogger’s Quilt Festival over at AmysCreativeSide!

If you’ve never been at my blog before – Welcome! and for those who have – Welcome Back!

The first Quilt I would like to enter into the Blogger’s Quilt Festival is my ‘Home Sweet Home’ Quilt Along Quilt in the ‘Group or Bee Quilts’ Category.

This quilt was created with 20 different blocks (17 designers) and 49 different sashings created as a result of the 2012 Home Sweet Home Quilt Along I ran on my blog. Every time you look at this quilt you notice something new which is always one of my goals when I create. This quilt was free motion quilted by Marcia’s Crafty Sewing & Quilting.

I wanted to show a few close ups…

In this block, I fussy cut the fabrics so there are animals in the windows.

When I could make it work, I tried to match the fabrics in the sashing with the fabrics in the blocks. By doing this it made it harder to differentiate between where a block started and where it ended. I loved the transition.

The way the sashing blends into the block above you wouldn’t even know that the tree isn’t part of the house block!

I also personally love the back. It’s pieced from fabrics I used in the front along with the ‘practice’ blocks I made when I was coming up with my block designs. I also printed out a list of the blocks and who designed them onto some fabric to include in the backing of the quilt.

I would love to hear what you think of this quilt!

The festival starts today, and runs through May 31st. It’s open to anyone who wants to enter, and there will be lots of great prizes. Be sure to check it out NOW! Get your post written and show off your quilt!

Once you’ve had a chance to visit as many of the quilts, as possible you may nominate your very favorite, for a Viewer’s Choice Award! To nominate complete the form at the bottom of the THIS POST with the link to the post and your email address. Nominations without a valid email will be eliminated, and multiple nominations with the same email will be eliminated. One entry per email address please.

If ‘Home Sweet Home’ is your favorite quilt head over to THIS POST and copy the text below:

Tomorrow is a BIG Day!

Posted by PersimonDreams on May 16, 2013 in Featured, quilt gallery | 5 comments

Well – it is to me anyway. The Blogger’s Quilt Festival starts tomorrow! I LOVE the Blogger’s Quilt Festival. I know I’m not giving you much time but I need your help deciding on the SECOND quilt that I’m going to enter.

I already know that I’m going to enter my ‘Home Sweet Home’ Quilt for the ‘group/bee quilt’ category…but this year

Each quilter can enter two quilts, in separate posts, and categories.

so I need your help deciding on my second quilt…

Here are the categories for the quilts…

Favorite throw quilt
Favorite bed quilt
Favorite group/bee quilt
Favorite two color quilt
Favorite ROYGBIV (color wheel) quilt
Favorite applique quilt
Favorite hand quilted quilt
Favorite home machine quilted quilt
Favorite professionally quilted quilt
Favorite quilt photographer
Favorite art quilt
Favorite doll/mini quilt
Favorite wall hanging
Favorite scrap quilt

Here are the quilts I was thinking I may enter with their potential categories…

‘Nini’s Granny Squares’ – This is one that I just finished and haven’t even blogged about yet. I’m thinking it would fit in the ‘throw quilt’ category or professional quilted category.